


boys will be boys

by scullyseviltwin



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Derry (Stephen King) is Terrible, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Teenagers, Violence, richie tozier character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:49:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22292851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/pseuds/scullyseviltwin
Summary: Richie gets the shit kicked out of him, Eddie patches him up, rinse, repeat.It isn’t until after Pennywise that Richie starts to hit back.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 41
Kudos: 348





	boys will be boys

**Author's Note:**

> Please, PLEASE heed the warning for homophobic language.
> 
> My profuse thanks to [oxfordlunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordlunch/pseuds/oxfordlunch) for the tremendous amount of support.

The first time he gets off a real zinger, the first time he says something that really lands,  is also the very first time that Henry Bowers calls Eddie a faggot.

Richie is used to being the punching bag for the Losers by now; he’s almost happy about it, like he serves a purpose in the gang. Like that makes him indisposable.    
  
When the bullying had started, when Bowers’s had taken one glimpse of Richie with his wild hair, his gangly limbs and thick glasses and decided ‘that’s the kid I’m going to fuck up,’ Richie didn’t know what  _ that word  _ meant. Going by the faces of his classmates, the tomato-red of the assistant vice-principal’s face, he had inferred that it was a very bad word, but it wasn’t in the dictionary, so he’d had to ask around. 

It had taken him two weeks to finally be let in on the secret.

Faggots touched other boys, and they  _ liked _ it.

Faggots got AIDS.

Faggots were not welcome in Derry; the townies made sure of that.   
  
“It’s just a word,” his mother told him one evening, sliding her hands through his hair as she gently held an ice pack to the shiner purpling beneath his right eye. “And words can’t hurt you, darling.”

His father had given the exact opposite advice. “Those degenerates will keep picking on you if you don’t stand up for yourself. They call you names, you call them names right back.”

That’s exactly what Richie does, using every creative word he can think of, every word he’s heard through static on the blocked cable channels that he can sometimes get to come in on the basement television. Through the garbled dialogue, he hears words he’s never heard before. 

Cunt and pussy and motherfucker.    
  
The next time Hockstetter called him a faggot, Richie was ready. “Why don’t you go fuck your mother.”

“What did you say?”

“I called you a motherfucker because you  _ are _ a motherfucker!” Richie crowed, as Stan’s eyes had gone wide and Bill had sucked in a shocked breath. Eddie had just grabbed onto Richie’s arm and tried to tug him away. 

Richie had gotten a square shot to the nose and detention for his trouble.

It’s not until he’s twelve that he has the fleeting thought, “Maybe I  _ am _ a faggot.”

The thing is, he’s always been tactile. He’s always been the one to initiate fumbled wrestling, or a headlock, or an arm slung across shoulders.    
  
But it’s not until he’s a little older that he realizes he _ like _ likes it. Not with all of his friends. 

Putting his arm around Bill makes him feel safe and proud, because Bill is good and smart and strong, and he lets Richie touch him in front of other people. Richie feels a thousand feet tall when Bill touches him back, his arm heavy and grounding against the back of Richie’s neck. 

When he touches Eddie, it’s different. Because Eddie looks at him, their noses too close, their shoulders angled into one another like they’re sharing a secret; he can’t get enough of those moments. Eddie lets him get closer than anyone else does, lets him push him down into the coarse sand at the quarry, lets Richie slide his fingers through his hair, lets Richie twine their fingers together so they can walk hand in hand. 

Richie really, really likes the way Eddie feels when he touches him. He really likes the way he feels when he touches Eddie. So maybe he is what they say he is.

Richie’s been called so many names that he’s built up a sort of tolerance to it, but when Belch walks up behind Eddie and throws _ that word _ in his face, it knocks the wind out of him, upsets his balance.   
  
Belch slings his hand through the loop on Eddie’s backpack and lifts him — he’s always wearing it too tight, too high, looks like a nerd — spits the word into Eddie’s face before dropping him, sending Eddie careening into the lockers.

Richie’s fingers curl into fists as he feels the icy cold dread like it’s the first time he’s understanding what the slur means. The word itself is nothing, two syllables that Richie is sure half the kids at school don’t know the meaning of. But Richie knows. 

And Eddie isn’t… that. 

  
There’s an upset oiliness in his stomach as the eyes of their classmates slide from Belch’s gigantic, angry presence to Eddie’s shaking form, small and scared, pale white against the burnt red of the lockers.

_ Faggot. _   
  
Richie is used to having that word slung at him as a fist connects with the back of his head. He’s used to being called a queer and a homo as someone shoves him into a locker. In a fucked up way, it makes sense. Maybe Richie deserves it, for everything he thinks, for how he acts and for who he is.    
  
But it’s unthinkable that someone would say that to Eddie, Eddie who is brave without knowing it. Eddie who always picks up the phone when Richie calls and bandages Richie’s skinned knees and shares his ice cream cones and is feisty and so, so clean.    
  
Unsullied.    
  
He’s not like Richie. Sonia Kaspbrak has made sure to reinforce that truth to him, dozens of times over.   


“Words can’t hurt you,” a voice slithers through his mind.   
  
“Hurt them back,” he hears his father say, paving over any urge he might have had to just walk the hell away.

“Hey Belch,” Richie calls, a hot flare of something skittering up the back of his neck. Eddie’s eyes widen in shock, but he doesn’t move as Richie steps in front of him, arms crossed tightly over his heaving chest. “Heard you puked behind the bleachers the other day. Choke on Henry’s dick?”

The kids in the hallway come through, kicking up a chorus of instigating “Ooooh!”s as Belch halts in his lumber to spin around. 

“Or are you bulimic now,” Richie doubles down. “Trying to watch your girlish figure? Lay off the tater tots, dumbass.”

The laughter from his classmates is immediate. Even Greta joins in, elbowing her field hockey teammates, signalling to them that they should laugh, too. And then, the entire hallway is laughing at big, mean Belch Huggins — even Eddie — and Richie has never felt so proud or good in his entire life.

He’s not ready when Eddie slips his arm through Richie’s, isn’t prepared to deal with how he feels, hearing Eddie’s elated peals of laughter as they tear through their classmates, out the doors of the school and down the street. 

Eddie runs like he forgets he has asthma, darts down the pavement as the wind blows his hair back and Richie struggles to keep up. His chest burns from exertion and from the overwhelming feeling of pride, at cutting Belch down, at making Eddie laugh.

They don’t stop until they make it to the old cemetery, and Eddie tugs him so hard towards the weathered gravestones that he slips, skids in the wet leaves and ends up on his ass. When he glances up, Eddie is staring down at him, chest heaving, the biggest grin Richie’s maybe ever seen plastered on his face.

“Dude, that was fucking awesome!” Eddie laughs. “He’s gonna kick your ass though, idiot.”

“Better my ass than yours,” Richie says, his own grin painfully wide on his face. 

Eddie’s still smiling, but his forehead crimps in concern. “Richie…”

“It’s all good,” Richie sighs, lying back atop the mossy grave, staring up at the sky. It’s only a moment before Eddie joins him.    
  
Eddie reaches over, takes his hand, and Richie is so terrified, so unmoored by a press of palm against palm, that the British Guy takes over. “Besides, I know how to take a punch, my good chap.”

That’s how it goes, for awhile. Some idiot will say something to Richie or one of his friends and Richie will let loose a string of expletives so varied and creative that it becomes something of a phenomenon. The other kids will stop in the hallway if someone steps to Richie, just to see what will happen. 

They laugh, he gets the shit kicked out of him, Eddie patches him up, rinse, repeat. 

It isn’t until after Pennywise that Richie starts to hit back. 

Hockstetter and Bowers are gone, which is something, because Belch and Victor can’t seem to function without a ringleader. But there are still assholes, still shitheads that feel the need to come up to them in the park, set their sights on Mike or Stan, use words that are hateful and awful and so wrong to Richie’s ears, that he swears he can’t help it. 

Instead of the words coming first, it’s the anger. He’s zero to sixty, once the tide of righteous indignation overtakes him, racing through his body and lighting him up. It’s not a feeling he particularly understands, but when it happens he feels powerful, like he has a purpose. 

Richie develops a mean right hook, and doesn’t use it sparingly. His hands are in a constant state of bruised and bleeding, no matter how often Eddie applies bacitracin and gauze.    
  
Eddie treats Richie’s hands with such reverence that it’s difficult for Richie to understand. He’ll call him an asshole and and idiot, but will be attending to him so carefully. The pads of his fingers will sweep over the bowl of Richie’s palm with no purpose whatsoever other than to touch. Sometimes, if Richie’s very, very lucky, Eddie will let him rest his head in his lap while he checks his skull for contusions and concussion.

Eddie is careful with him in a way that Richie doesn’t know how to comprehend. He suggests that Richie just walk away next time, let the sharp words be enough and Richie think he might be able to, might be able to if it didn’t mean that Eddie would stop touching him. 

Beverly is the first one to call him on it. 

They’re leaving the movies and he’s got a cup of Coke in his hand, his other arm slung around Eddie’s shoulders. He’s doing a pretty sweet impression of Homer Simpson when a senior boy decides it’s a good time to call them “a bunch of queers.”

Richie throws the Coke at the guy’s head and they end up exchanging heated insults in front of the ticket booth, but it doesn’t become a fight. Richie wonders why he feels disappointed about that. 

They slog onto their next destination, but Bev hangs back, loops her arm through Richie’s and holds him with her until the group is out of earshot. “Tell me, for real, do you have a fucking death wish?”

She lights up and they begin walking, loping down the sidewalk at the pace she sets. 

“I’m just so fucking fed up with these idiots. Like, get new insults, fuck. There’s gotta be another word for queer that just hasn’t reached us in Bumfuck, Maine, right?”

Beverly is someone who has always known Richie. She gave him one look and knew him right down to his bones. Beverly had pressed herself into his life, worming her way in and setting up shop in a way that left no room for argument. She was as effortlessly smart as he was and was deeply embarrassed about it in the same way. They liked the same music and shared crushed packs of stolen Winstons and talked about how much they wanted to get the fuck out of Derry. Not that the others didn’t feel the same clawing need to escape, but with Beverly, there wasn’t any judgment.

She wanted to be a DJ or a social worker or a designer and she didn’t give a shit that Richie had no idea what the hell he wanted to do with his life. 

“Hey, you can tell me anything, you know that,” she says and holds him at the corner as they watch their friends file into the pizza parlour across the street. His eyes remain on them until the door shuts firmly with a jangle. 

Richie glances at her, at the softness of her gaze and the sweet openness of her face, and he wants to cry. Instead, he plucks the cigarette from her lips and takes a long drag. “Yeah, I know that.”

She blinks at him and hangs her head, and he knows there’s a whopper coming, a doozy of an observation.   
  
“Rich, what the hell are you doing.” It’s not a question, because she knows, he doesn’t know how, but there’s no avoiding the fact that she’s making him face something he’s only ever had the courage to think about in the darkness of his bedroom. Fucking Beverly. 

Richie glances across the street and meets Eddie’s questioning gaze through the window of the pizza joint. Eddie holds up a menu, shakes it maniacally and sticks out his tongue, and Richie gives him the finger.

Beverly’s hand tightens on his arm as she follows his gaze; he releases a slow stream of smoke up towards the sky.

“You know,” she says, sadly. “It won’t always be like this. It’s better, in other places.”

“Yeah,” Richie drawls, tossing the smoldering butt onto the sidewalk and stamping it out. “But we’re here, now.”

That’s how it goes for awhile, Richie willing to throw down with anyone who fucks with his people, with Eddie. He gets a reputation as a scrapper, gets suspended, almost loses his spot as salutatorian, not that he gives a shit about that.   
  
When Eddie suggests he should maybe start learning to fight for himself, Richie realizes how colossally he’s fucked up.   
  
“Are you kidding me, pipsqueak? You’d fucking die!” Richie tries to tell him, tossing a split log into the bonfire that they’re all huddled around. They’re all pretty fucked up. Between the weed and the pilfered alcohol, no one is in their right mind. 

Eddie shoves at him and slips, plonks down onto the ground in front of Richie and shakes his head at him. He’s adorable and loud in his drunkenness, all newborn fawn mixed with all the ardor of a pissed off longshoreman. “Dude, I’m faster than you are, and it’s kind of not fair that you’re like, sticking up for me all the time.”

Richie plays with the peeling paper of his beer label to keep from picking at the scabs on his knuckles. “Nah, man, happy to do it.”

Eddie’s head cocks and he stares at Richie, the light of the bonfire making his eyes shine like a cartoon character’s. “Yeah but, shouldn’t I know how to defend myself?”

“Why bother, I’m here. Like your bodyguard. Ooh, maybe next time I’ll Costner you, carry you outta whatever sorta shit we’re in. How do you feel about wearing a corset? If we’re gonna do this, we should really go all in.”

Eddie just blinks at him. His big eyes are all swimmy, from the cheap vodka and from laughing so hard he’s cried at least twice and it’s too easy for Richie to get lost in them, so he looks away, sings a few bars of “I Will Always Love You” until Stan throws an empty can at his head.

“Always a fucking comedian,” Eddie mutters.

They get quiet, watching the fire for a bit. Richie wonders if Eddie is as ensnared in the sort of dark thoughts that he is; he hopes not.   
  
“Why are you always defending me, Rich?” Eddie finally asks, after he’s scooted closer so that they’re shoulder to shoulder. His voice is so clear, so crisp with intent that Richie momentarily wonders if Eddie’s as drunk as Richie thinks he is.

“You’re my best friend,” is the first thing out of his mouth, a practiced answer to anyone when they question how attentive he is to Eddie or how close they are or how he’s all Richie ever talks about. “And I don’t want you to get hurt. I just… don’t want to see you hurt, Eds.”

Eddie says nothing.

So Richie repeats it, like he always has. “You’re my best friend.”

It’s been a good enough excuse in the past. 

It isn’t now.

“Is that all?” Eddie asks, and Richie turns to glance at him, but he’s staring hard at the fire. “You said you’re here, but you won’t always be here, Richie. You won’t always be here to protect me.”

Maybe it’s the thought of Eddie trying to take on someone with his fists that does it. Maybe it’s the booze, too; he definitely drank too much on an empty stomach. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s in love with Eddie and has been for as long as he can remember.

“I could be,” his voice is quiet and wavering and he briefly thinks that Eddie hasn’t heard him.

Eddie rolls his shoulder so that Richie is jostled, and he almost falls over onto his side before he catches himself. “Could be what?” Eddie asks, speech just a touch slurred, breathless.

“Always… around. Always with you.” It’s too much for him, the startling reality of the words spoken aloud, and his head falls to his pulled-up knees. Richie folds in on himself, wrapping his arms around his calves, half hoping that Eddie is too stupid to figure out what the hell he’s trying to say, but knowing he can’t take it back. 

“Is this a joke?”   
  
“I don’t have a zany one-liner for this one, Eds, I don’t…” 

“Hey…”

“All that shit that people have been saying about me, I uhm,” his voice is so quiet, as he says into the valley between his knees. “It’s true.”

The fire cracks loud, sending a spray of embers at them and Richie flinches, but doesn’t lift his head. He’s like a child, pretending no one can see him if he can’t see them. Through the small crack in his calves, he watches Eddie put out an ember that’s landed on Richie’s sneaker, the wetness on the tip of his finger causing it to sizzle.

“Why… didn’t you tell me?” Eddie asks eventually and there’s hurt in his voice. Confusion, too, but Richie swears,  _ swears _ he doesn’t hear a single trace of disgust. He tries to imagine — because he’s fucked in the head and more than a little masochistic — to imagine Eddie saying any of those awful things that he’s been called.

He can’t.

Because Eddie wouldn’t. He wouldn’t ever.

“Did you think-”

“What am I supposed to think,” Richie says, and there’s heat in it. What is he supposed to think, when people have been turning their words into weapons aimed at him and his covetous heart. What’s he supposed to think, after spending most of his life hearing people —hearing  Sonia Kaspbrak — saying that boys like him are dirty and wrong, sick in the head. What the hell is he supposed to think?

Eddie sighs, “That’s... that’s fair.” His head suddenly lands on Richie’s shoulder and Richie goes so stock still that he stops breathing. “People are assholes. Everyone in Derry is… a fucking asshole.”

Richie can’t help but think that it’s not just Derry, and that’s what’s really fucking terrifying. What if there’s nowhere to go, what if he has to feel like this forever? That thought it as terrible as any he’s had, and he’s overcome with a wave of despair that threatens to choke him.

“I’m scared, Eds,” he finally admits, some of the tension cracking, his breath coming back; he rolls his head until it’s against Eddie’s. “You make me… feel so many things, like. And when people say things about you, I just. It’s like I can’t contain it. Because seeing you hurt hurts me, too.”

He can feel Eddie breathing, the warmth radiating off of his body. This close, he can smell Eddie, the fading scent of Irish Spring and a slight tang of sweat. It’s so achingly familiar and brings such a cacophony of swirling emotions that Richie breathes him in, closes his eyes, fights against the urge to feel shameful and disgusting and dirty. 

Because being with Eddie feels so achingly right, correct in a fated sort of way. Even so, that’s not enough for Richie to want Eddie to feel the same, not if this is how the world treats people like him. “Because I don’t want you to be like me. Because if you’re like me… it’s, it’s so much harder.”

“You don’t always have to protect me, Richie,” Eddie says quietly and that does get his attention. “Even if I’m like you, you don’t have to protect me.”

“But I want to,” he says, almost a whine.

“I want to protect you, too.” Eddie says, so quiet, just for Richie’s ears. “I wish I knew how to,” his voice is a touch melancholy, but firm. “I guess that just how you feel about people you love.”

Richie turns his nose into Eddie’s hair and lets his words sink into his hazy brain. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Eddie pulls back, their gazes meeting in shadows thrown by the fire. Eddie gives him a flicker of a smile and Richie says, “Being the way I am.”

The look he gives Richie is complicated, confused and amused and sad. He unwinds himself from Richie’s side, unspooling and shifting in the dirt so that they’re facing one another. “Don’t, don’t apologize for that Richie, what the fuck?”   
  
“I don’t know how to be, I don’t know, what am I supposed to do, I  _ like _ you and, fuck Eds-”   
  
Eddie kisses him then, physically tugs Richie in. It’s off center, close-mouthed and Richie sucks in a breath of air, falling back onto his palms as Eddie upsets his balance with his enthusiasm. He can feel Eddie’s lips curling in a smile and it makes Richie smile too, because he doesn’t feel dirty like he’d expected to, he feels incandescent. 

Richie feels right, whole in a way he can’t place, that he didn’t know existed. 

Eddie’s lips taste like Gordon’s and the cherry cola he’d mixed it with and it makes Richie think of endless summer and lingering touches that it turns out were more wanted than he’d ever thought.

It’s a light thing that peters out after a moment, Eddie warm, gritty hand against his cheek, holding him close. 

“Chill, dude,” Eddie says, still near enough for Richie to feel breath gust against his lips. “Please. Did you not hear me say I  _ love _ you? Did you miss that, because that took me a lot, you know, to say.”

“I did, I just, you’re drunk and-”

“So are you, that doesn’t  _ change _ anything.” Eddie’s eyes shine, so bright, so goddamned hopeful.    
  
“Please don’t be fucking around,  _ please _ don’t be,” Richie begs, still feeling the warmth of Eddie’s mouth, lingering. He feels all lit up in such a new way, feels like he finally fits in his skin. “You can’t be, it’d kill me.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans and pulls him in again, their lips opening against one another, Eddie pulls Richie’s bottom lip and give it a quick swipe with his tongue.

“Maybe it’s gonna be hard,” Eddie says against his mouth. “But maybe it’ll be easier if we do it together.”    
  
_ Eddie was always the brave one. _

And Richie believes him; he doesn’t know how to not believe Eddie, not when he’s looking at Richie like that, making him think that this might actually be possible. It’s a brilliant thing.    
  
One of the Losers lets out a loud, two-fingered whistle and Eddie growls, giggles, and kisses Richie again, a messy press because they’re both smiling crookedly at one another.

It’s going to be so hard, but for now, for right now, with Eddie snuggling into his side, laughing at something their friends have said, it feels so tremendously easy. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/scullyseviltwin) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/scullyseviltwin).


End file.
